Wednesday, May 8

Spring Specimen Art AND Silhouette Chipboard Promotion!

Before anything else, today is the LAST day to enter our musical tote giveaway from Southpaw Crafts! Click here to enter!

Alright. I was SO excited when Valerie and I were chosen as Silhouette affiliates. I love trying out products for you and offering you a discount! Right now Silhouette is promoting their new chipboard. Us long time Silhouette users have been waiting and waiting for this, because a lot of other brands of chipboard just didn't cut right.

I received a package of their chipboard (along with a dust cover for my Cameo!), and I knew right away what I was going to do with it; my Spring specimen art! Chipboard can provide great stability to a fragile project, be used for 3D shapes or boxes, or even just by itself as a great neutral color. The Silhouette brand chipboard is about as thick as a cereal box.

I started by cutting out my butterflies with the chipboard, using this shape from the Silhouette Store.

I used the chipboard setting and it cut perfectly on the first try! (pardon my messy cutting mat!)

**Silhouette tip! Did you know that there's a built in blade depth ch anger on your Silhouette? No more worrying about losing the plastic ring!**

Next I cut out a whole bunch more butterflies of the same shape in coordinating colors, and started messing around with different wings on different bodies until I was ready to put it all together.

Now, I am a lazy crafter and often eye things instead of measuring them out. With my specimen art I do not want to measure equal distance between each shape, or stress out about eyeing it when I'm putting it all together. So I came up with, in my opinion, a genius idea. You can change the Silhouette blade for a pen, right? So I created my layout using the Silhouette software (which is much easier to measure and space evenly with), and sent my base paper through the silhouette and had the pen sketch where my shapes needed to go! Now all I had to do was glue them right on the spot and there was no wondering whether they were even. :)

So after ALL of THAT, you get this gorgeous piece of decor for your home. Don't forget to check out the other specimen art that I've made throughout the year to put in the same frame!